“Complaining” in the Workplace: A Leadership Challenge
How we frame the story changes the story. How we think about and define problems determines how we talk about them, and mobilize our time and resources to address them.
To leaders and managers of people who find yourselves describing your staff as “complaining”, how would you move differently if you reframed their communication as:
A desire for connection and an attempt at assessing the presence of psychological safety in their relationship with you and the organization.
Calls for transparency in communication from you about decision-making on things that impact their work and their lives.
Calls to be active participants in the process and/or have their opinions and experiences solicited about decisions that impact their work and their lives.
A desire for the organization to acknowledge systems of oppression and address their impacts on staff and community members with marginalized identities through more more equitable structures and policies.
Asks for more work-life balance and understanding with a particular focus on the ways the pandemic has impacted and continues to impact their lives.
A desire for work cultures that are based in abundance and have trust as the foundation with an understanding that people who are appreciated, trusted and supported will do their work well instead of work cultures rooted in scarcity and the archaic belief that people are inherently lazy and will not do their jobs unless they can be observed under surveillance and/or micromanaged.
A desire to institutionalize their feedback on your performance so that it has implications for your trajectory the way your feedback has on theirs.
and so much more.
What thoughts, experiences, and emotions come to mind? How would you move differently if you reframed staff communication in this way?
How would you organize your time and resources to address these desires and concerns?
What results would be produced from those actions?
To staff, how would this reframing impact your experiences?
From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones
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